In an emergency such as a levee break, flood, or spill, they can be deployed to gather information in a way that is completely impossible with stationary sensors. These 17″ tall bots can steer with the help of their twin props and communicate water quality information back to the base via cellular communication and short wave radio. They describe the resulting data as being like a “google traffic map” showing speed, depth, and contamination of the water.

There’s a ton of detail on their site, including breakdowns of how the software and hardware are put together. There’s even a bit of the evolution of the hardware showing the abandoned previous models.

I’m going to have to do some whitepaper googling, but I want to say that some guys from Texas beat them to this 4 years ago. I also know anecdotal that UGA and Oregon have veeeeery similar modules. I’m assuming there is something inside or the fact that it uses props instead of jets to differentiate.
Sorry- one friend worked FEMA flood GIS, the other is a benthic plankton level specialist. I’ll have to email them and see what is different and report back.